Storm brings lots of lightning, some rain

Many Hannibal residents were awakened Tuesday morning by a sound heard all too infrequently during the drought-plagued summer of 2012 - thunder.

DANNY HENLEYdanny.henley@courierpost.com

Many Hannibal residents were awakened Tuesday morning by a sound heard all too infrequently during the drought-plagued summer of 2012 - thunder.While the storms came with a good deal of lightning, the amount of precipitation was not overwhelming. According to the Hannibal Filter Plant, a total of 0.53 of an inch of rain fell between 2:50 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. That was the most rainfall seen in Hannibal since Sept. 1 when 0.84 of an inch fell.The storms caused only a handful of power outages, according to the Board of Public Works. “There were three of them and they were nothing big,” said Stephen Boltinghouse of the BPW. All three occurred around 8 a.m. One near the Marion County 911 lasted around 40 minutes. An outage near Burlington Northern and New London Gravel Road lasted 27 minutes. Service was restored in just 17 minutes in the Park Terrace Drive area. “They occurred during the daytime when crews were here. We sent one crew to each place and it didn’t take long,” said Boltinghouse.Boltinghouse admitted it wouldn’t have been unusual for there to have been more outages.“I saw a lot of lightning on my way to work,” he said. “It just depends if it hits transformers or trees which causes limbs to drop on lines.”The lightning prompted no runs for either the Hannibal Fire Department or the Hannibal Rural Fire Protection District.“I was surprised as low as the lightning was and as much as there was,” said Mike Benjamin, deputy fire chief in Hannibal.“Things were quiet for Hannibal Rural overnight,” said Mike Dobson, Hannibal Rural fire chief. “I didn’t realize that it was storming until shortly before 5 a.m. Shortly after I got up the thunder shook the house pretty good.”Lt. John Zerbonia of the Hannibal Police Department reports there were no traffic crashes in the city during the storms.“It kind of surprised me that there weren’t any accidents due to the weather,” he said.